Wednesday, Dec 15, 2010, 6:20 am

Choosing Fear Over Dreams: Legal Path for Immigrant Students in Limbo

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Young activists push for the DREAM Act in April 2010. (Photo by Flickr user DreamActivist)

News headlines across the country today will feature politicians lamenting the state of public education, complaining that the "de-skilling" of the American workforce is eroding its "global competitiveness," stressing the need to boost college graduation rates and to close the achievement gap.

Flip the page, and you'll read about lawmakers militantly rejecting a policy that would create a more skilled workforce, enable thousands of upward striving students to obtain a college degree, and prevent poor youth of color from dropping out of high school and into low-wage jobs. That cognitive dissonance is at the heart of the debate over the DREAM Act, which would open a path to legalization for undocumented immigrant youth. Many have spent virtually their whole lives in the U.S., some are stellar students.

No formal data exists on the exact educational pursuits of these students, but reasonable projections can be made. Latinos, for example, who make up the largest population of undocumented students, were awarded 36,402 degrees in technical fields in 2006 (31.5 percent of total Latino college degrees) according to data from the NSF.

We can roughly estimate, then, that passing the DREAM Act could add as many as 252,000 new scientists, engineers, and technical workers to this country’s critically thin supply. Conversely, failing to pass the bill would rob this country of a critical mass of brain power and technological innovation. An undocumented scientist or engineer has little to no hope of finding a job in their field of expertise—a travesty given their extraordinary sacrifice and intellectual potential.

But according to anti-immigrant hardliners, these model citizens in waiting hardly deserve a backdoor to "amnesty." That would erode the integrity of our immigration law, right? After all, writes Heather Mac Donald at National Review, the student "could have spent five years in remedial classes and the next five accumulating a year’s worth of credits in Chicano/a studies." People like that couldn't possibly benefit America's economy, could they?

Ironically, the struggle for the DREAM Act coincides with a psychological slump among young people. Disillusioned by the endless economic crisis, an entire generation of fresh college graduates are retiring to their parents' basements as their diplomas and resumes gather dust.

The so-called DREAM'ers, the youth who have donned wishful graduation caps at rallies in support of the bill, are an island of optimism in this ocean of cynicism. Many of them fear being deported to a country they've never known, possibly facing poverty or persecution. But more just want to walk with their class on graduation day, to become the only doctor serving their neighborhood, or just to make their parents proud. The only thing standing in their way is a handful of senators.

While tremendous economic stagnation persists and jobs migrate to cheaper shores, some politicians defy logic, and history, by rejecting a chance to allow immigration to reinvigorate the labor force and fuel industries.

Today, countless undocumented immigrants are turning out to be better schooled in the American Dream than the restrictionists grumbling on Capitol Hill. If the DREAM Act fails, it will present a devastating lesson to America's youth: the country has not only has ceased to be the land of opportunity, but now punishes its children for daring to believe in that promise.

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Michelle Chen is a contributing editor at In These Times, a contributor to Working In These Times, and an editor at CultureStrike. She is also a co-producer of Asia Pacific Forum on Pacifica's WBAI. Her work has appeared on Alternet, Colorlines.com, Ms., and The Nation, Newsday, and her old zine, cain. Follow her on Twitter at @meeshellchen.